About Namdeo Dhasal

Dilip Chitre is a poet of significance both in English and Marathi. He is a painter too. His contribution as a translator is also great. Of his translations,, two noted works are his translations of Tuka in Says Tuka and his translations of the Marathi Dalit poet Namdeo Dhasal. Tehelka had published an interview with Chitre about Dhasal in 2007. The interview was conducted by S Anand of navayana. Read the complete interview here. One of the questions Anand asks relates to the perennial question of the obscurity of the poem and their political stance. I like the way Chitre answers it.

 

S Anand: There’s something I’ve wanted to ask you, Dilip. His political followers — as you’ve told me — when he’s in hospital, there are some two hundred Panthers outside. Do they read his poetry, do they have an understanding of it? Or is there a split between Namdeo the poet, and this other, political, person?

Dilip Chitre: I don’t see it as a split in Namdeo; it’s the one-sidedness of his multiple audiences. His Dalit audience sees him as a charismatic leader, but they may not possess the literary sensibility demanded by his poetry. He’s not someone like Gadar, who will write these very simplistic poems, and some of them rank bad poetry, and express revolutionary sentiments and rouse people and so on. A middle-class person approaching his poetry does not know the Dalit situation, he does not even want to know. So he misses part of the poetry…

Namdeo dares you, as a reader, and as a translator. There’s something I describe as aesthetic subversion. Namdeo subverts bourgeois sensibilities, and that’s what appeals to me. A subversive act tries to undo the entire system on which your values are based. Namdeo is a guerrilla poet. In one phrase, one line, he’ll juxtapose dialect and the slang of Kamathipura with European references in very sophisticated Marathi.

 

A Kannada Poem by S Manjunath

In the street

– S Manjunath

Rain began to lash out midway;

granny covered the infant in her arms

with the folds of her sari

I can’t hasten

to shelter them under my umbrella – yet

I can’t keep on under it unruffled.

I hurry

as if to cross the distance

between us;

an unknown twinge – as if piercing the heart

from the umbrella’s handle.

As the granny rushed under a tree

with the infant bouncing like a ball in her arms

as if the rain drops had washed away her age

making even the infant cackle

tinkling waves of the infant’s laughter come floating

where have dark clouds gone

no one needs this umbrella anymore

 

Dalit Poetry in Kannada III – Moodnaakadu Chinnaswamy

There are some excellent dalit poets writing in Kannada these days. I don’t have too good an access to the latest dalit poetry emerging in Kannada as my visits to Karnataka are not vary frequent. I try my best to get as much as my friends can send me. Continuing my earlier posts, here and here, I present a translation of another Kannada Dalit poet. This time another well known name: Moodnakadu Chinnaswamy. I am familiar only with a few of his poems and they are very good. Here is one ‘Footwear and me’ in my poor translation. I read it in a magazine and can’t find that copy around me. So I am a little unsure if this is the complete poem or if I managed to translate only a fragment. I am sorry, I haven’t done enough homework on this. But I promise I will soon rectify this deficiency. I also don’t have a picture of the poet M. C. If anybody has one, do share, please….

Footwear and me

* Moodnaakadu Chinnaswamy

When I go to the temple

The footwear is not left outside

It is I who is outside

Shoes on cobbler’s feet

Makes as much news as when

A man bites a dog

Taking off the shoes

Everyone’s feet

tread all over me

I am a plant:

and they just don’t realize

that under their feet are my roots

Like a crane craning her neck

to the dried up lake’s spring

I stand on my toes

and peep in to steal

as much of god’s form as I can see

 

A Poem about Mother

A phenomenal prose writer Lankesh was not specially known for his poems except for his ‘Nilu’ poems.  But this one has moved so many people. Earthy in its perception of the mother, the poem so well captures what most of the modernist Kannada writers were doing: indexing the shift in the consciousness from rural to urban. The poem was translated by KV Tirumalesh, himself a great poet. It had appeared in Kavi Bharati- Triennial of Indian Poetry, March 1987.

Mother

* Lankesh (Translated by K.V. Tirumalesh)

Like a wild bear
She tended her children,
Cared for her husband and cared for the money.
She would howl like a hurt dog,
Groan and fight.

Mean, crooked and fretful like a monkey,
Guided only by the welfare of the family,
She would be a fury
If her son went out of her hand
Or husband went after another woman.

The jungle bear doesn’t want your scriptures;
My mother lived for a few morsels of food;
For work and for her children’s sake,
For a roof to live under,
For a sheet to cover,
For that upright walk
Among her equals.

For her are these tears of gratitude
And admiration – for bringing me up.
Bringing me to life
And for that departing – as if
It were to the fields that she went
Talking quietly
This woman of the earth.

 

Namdeo Dhasal, ‘Kamatipura’

I think the most important 20th century poet of India has to be Namdeo Dhasal. I am nobody to make the judgment, but that is my gut feeling on the basis of the poets I have read and read about. No wonder that another poet whom we all want to turn to has translated him with so much love, Dilip Chitre. His book on Namdeo Dhasal is published by Navayana and is a must buy. It has several of Dhasal’s poems and photographs. A kind of a basic reader for Dhasal. Order it from navayana or flipkart.

from: literaturfestival.com

“Kamatipura”

(translation: Dilip Chitre)

The nocturnal porcupine reclines here
Like an alluring grey bouquet
Wearing the syphilitic sores of centuries
Pushing the calendar away
Forever lost in its own dreams

Man’s lost his speech
His god’s a shitting skeleton
Will this void ever find a voice, become a voice?

If you wish, keep an iron eye on it to watch
If there’s a tear in it, freeze it and save it too
Just looking at its alluring form, one goes berserk
The porcupine wakes up with a start
Attacks you with its sharp aroused bristles
Wounds you all over, through and through
As the night gets ready for its bridegroom, wounds begin to blossom
Unending oceans of flowers roll out
Peacocks continually dance and mate

This is hell
This is a swirling vortex
This is an ugly agony
This is pain wearing a dancer’s anklets

Shed your skin, shed your skin from its very roots
Skin yourself
Let these poisoned everlasting wombs become disembodied.
Let not this numbed ball of flesh sprout limbs
Taste this
Potassium cyanide!
As you die at the infinitesimal fraction of a second,
Write down the small ‘s’ that’s being forever lowered.

Here queue up they who want to taste
Poison’s sweet or salt flavour
Death gathers here, as do words,
In just a minute, it will start pouring here.

O Kamatipura,
Tucking all seasons under your armpit
You squat in the mud here
I go beyond all the pleasures and pains of whoring and wait
For your lotus to bloom.
— A lotus in the mud.

http://india.poetryinternationalweb.org/piw_cms/cms/cms_module/index.php?obj_id=10554

The Marathi original:

 

Contemporary Kannada Poetry – Ashok Hegde

Here is the translation of Ashok Hegde’s poem A Morning Picture.

A Morning Picture

* Ashok Hegde

A sleep-interrupted, tea-nauseated chilly morn,
patches of people all over the floor,

in the corner, like a crumpled shirt, a child,
an old woman scratching her dugs in residual drugged sleep,

a teen’s endless cough.
As folk, like the wick extinguished in midnight,

lose the world in their impatience,

you, woman, in lonely expectation waiting…

Come and be a live track,
from your mere touch let
my life rail run full speed, fill each of your
atom with me, untie knots,

drape me in a new dress,

your lips to my lips bring;
drink sins in cupfuls, loot

the cup of my life.

Give to my hands all

mysteries of your body,

place ear to ear so they record each ache,

inhale the sweat smell of my body,

let it spread in this world
in anticipation of a new birth.

Let the snow melt, the rain-moth float,

let the river swell into a sea,

you be fuel to my

fiery lust, burn beyond other births

let hell’s worm be born

Phoenix like in this trashy flesh.

(Translation: Kamalakar)

 

Punjabi Novelist Dalip Kaur Tiwana’s Gone are the Rivers

Gone are the Rivers is a novel by the Punjabi novelist Dalip Kaur Tiwana.

from: sikhiwiki.org

Tiwana is considered as the leading prose writer in Punjabi. She has written novels, short stories, autobiography and literary criticism. She was a professor  of Punjabi. Her first novel is Agni Prikhy (The Ordeal of Fire) in the late sixties. One of her early works was the famous Eho Hamara Jivan. Her autobiographical work Travelling on Bare Feet is also much discussed. As these titles suggest her works are bent towards the metaphorically.

I have read only one of her works: Gone are the Rivers. It made an immediate impact on me. Primarily for two reasons: it revises the form of the novel. secondly, it has clear unmisty eyes about the past.

Gone are the Rivers uses two kinds of temporalities. The first refers to a feudal time while the second to a modern/democratic time. The narrative in the first part is cyclical, episodic, symptomatic and never linear. The second part is refers to the post-Independent time; the narrative is more linear, more realistic, more like the ‘novel’. This internal refraction about the genre seems to be alive to the burden of a postcolonial writer. This novel becomes important, I think, because of this experiment in relation to the novel form.

The second feature I like is that it is least nostalgic. One of the irritating aspects of some novels is the nostalgia for the bygone lifestyle. A nostalgia that seems to express craving for the feudal social structure. While this novel narrates the passing of time and the transformation in society and culture, major reshuffling in social relations, at no pint this novel indicate a desire for the revival of what is past.

It begins with a graphic portrayal of the lifestyle of the courtiers of the state of Patiala. This depiction is not a chronological narrative. It follows in an episodic manner the various walks of life. The novel builds up a dense picture of the political economy, the social relations, the sexual domain, the familial relations, the  master-servant relations etc. The story line relates the changes in the life of a high ranking minister of the Patiala court.

The second part of the novel refers to contemporary India. Here, the feudal classes have been humbled, there is now the social relations are more flat.

More in the next blog.

 

The Future of Literature

from: Pierre Bonnard

The title of this blog sounds foolishly grand. Dont expect from me something that sublime.

It is a reference to a friend’s phrase in a blog report of a translation workshop held in Kolkata. In expressing wonder at the sincere love for literature that had brought a diverse group of people together, Dibya uses this phrase along with ‘power of literature’. Here, let me quote him:

It was a revelation to discover that there are still people who believe in the importance, the power and the future of literature, and are willing to do what it takes to spread the word. For this writer, the issue of plurality was even acute, as he was representing the state of Assam, even though he is based in Pune, Maharashtra, and closely associated with the Marathi literature. The workshop was a stamp of approval for this writer’s belief that literature is always polyphonic, and there is more than one way to understand the di-versity and plurality, that is India.

Yes, wouldnt it be a sad day when we feel less and less excited about literature? Wouldnt it be a sad day when we find all our intellectual resourses in an sms? Wouldnt it be a sad day when the last of the poetry societies announce their suspension?

Yet, why is it sad?

Why so many of us spend hours writing blogs about literature?

Writing poems that so few people read, not something that thousands of people read.

In fact, why do we spend so much effort even to translate?

I dont know. There must be a funny bone.

But I am happy with Dibya that there are many people, in so many unexpected corners of our little world, caring for something so ‘vicarious’.

 

Kannada Poetry – Alanahalli Krishna

His Kadu is the quintessential modernist novella. Yet, in his poetry he is very unlike the Kannada navya tradition of poetry. This is Shrikrishna Alanahalli who but for his early demise would have been by now known to everyone with any interest in Indian Literature. He has written enough to make him an icon in Kannada. Several stories and three novels. His poetry both his own and what he brought from elsewhere, are all of considerable interest. But I am interested specifically in this poem, ‘Butterfly and the Master’. I think it is a very good poem. Here Alanahalli manages to mix wonder and politics. There is the signature point of view of the ‘boy’ (not child yet not adult) that like the butterfly itself is now transforming from being ignorant to becoming aware of the worldly matters. The assertion at the end of the poem to retain innocent beauty as against accepting the ‘truth’ of science is super. For the boy is here trying to defend not so much truth or otherwise but his own idea of beauty. The sterilised knowledge with its impersonality is violent to its object – is why I think the boy refuses to accept teacher’s truth.

Anyway, here is Alanahalli Krishna’s :

Butterfly and the Teacher

* Shrikrishna Alanahalli

Near the pond in my village,

on the fence next to the well,

just in front of my home even,

such colourful butterflies!

White butterfly with red wings

gray butterfly with black wings

golden bordered – blue, yellow

deep red, coal black, light green…

I would go catching them

each time the colours overflow

the colours turn into butterflies

and bloom in my eyes.

From here to there, there to here

bending, swaying, flying,

my mind following

each of the flight

with colourful butterflies in my head,

and butterfly-like feelings

I would catch them daily,

then let them fly off

or smear the hands with gold dust

or keeping a golden wing hidden among pages,

I would feel happy,

would be filled with pleasure.

2

Suddenly one day when I was in the class of

the new bald plated teacher

when he said: ‘insect turns into a colourful butterfly’.

What I heard was like hot lead poured in my ears

I sat shell shocked.

Insect, cheee, thorny all over

black like the wool of a bear,

by chance if you touch

burning itch all over the body

If you squash it in disgust

Just puss.

Can such a disgusting insect

become my beautiful butterfly?

or is it loud talk of the

bald plated teacher?

The way in which doing the daily lessons

made true the earth going around the sun,

What if this also turns into truth?

No, none of these bald plated teacher’s lessons

no need to learn

This lesson on how my beautiful butterfly

was only an insect.

 

Abdul Rasheed – Kannada’s Basheer

Rasheed is a rare poet. Believe me he will prove to be one among the best. His poems as well as his stories. His eyes see the unseeable obvious. His heart hears the the faintest of voices.

from: mysorepost.wordpress.com

His story ‘Kirti Patake’ (Rag Flag) is one of the best short stories I have read in the recent years. When you read him you will remember Vaikam Basheer. A few good translators should come up and carry him across to other languages. This story occurs on 6th December, the day of the Babri Masjid destruction. The oblique manner of evoking that farce through a lovable character’s entirely funny escapades is superb. Symbolic yet warm, satirical yet humble, intensely literary yet eminently readable – that is how this story is.

He is a fine poet too. Read his poems to see how intensely a poem can be personal. That is to say density of the personal details makes the poem totally objective. He creates a felt world, but does it through an intelligent weaving of details so that the poem grows into an intricate pattern. Vibrantly romantic, such poems of Rasheed defy the requirements of the current fashons.

This blogger in his ignorance has attempted a translation of one such poem:

A Personal Poem

* Abdul Rashid

Your sweat-filled chest

And the grains of sand from the sea inside your toe nail

And the feather caught in the curls of your hair

The scratch marks on your back that you have yourself made

And my grief at not being responsible for any of these.

Your alert indifference,

the grace of the fingers while you stretch your body,

and your generosity of yielding in small measures and withholding,

your crazy confidence that I can be put to sleep

by your flirtatious fingers in my hair!

I blabber and go back to sleep,

see all and cease to be,

touch and see if everything is in place,

returning after sending you away…

 

Dalit Poetry in Kannada II

One of the contemporary Kannada poets whose work I am amazed by is N K Hanumantayya. He has two collections so far: Himada Hejje (Snow Steps – 1998) and Chitrada Bennu (Picture’s Spine – 2006). There was an unnecessary controversy in Karnataka around 2004 about eating beef. At the time Hanumantayya wrote a poem titled: ‘Becoming a cow by eating cow-meat’, an excellent poem, which caught the attention of many and NKH began to be liked by poetry lovers. One such is this blogger.

Hanumantayya’s poems are written in standard dialect. His is not the dialect-based poetry. He is also a very frequent user of symbols:

On this ant

I placed my heavy step

And lifted it after a while.

The ant is still moving. (‘Spine of the Picture’)

Check out this from ‘The image in ant’s maw’:

While asleep in the night’s dark cave

She opened her eyes to the sound of dewdrops falling

Like the stars smiling on darkened bones

NKH sees all the small beings. He is alert to the living beings that we take for granted. While in the ‘Spine..’ poem quoted above he goes on to thank all these tiny beings whose life is forever casually endangered by our activities, his poems also frequently show gratefulness to ’soil’. Creatures populate his imagery. Here is a fine little poem ‘Firefly and me’:

That night unable to sleep

I stepped out

The courtyard was filled

With fireflies.

Their light made me

Sweat and scream

One of my favourite poems is titled ‘Elephants that melt in earthworm’s mouth’. Here it is in full:

A sculptor

Carved on a mustard seed

Hundreds of elephants and howdahs

And twisted his moustache proudly

And laughed at time rotting

Before that mustard seed.

A small bird

Flew down the electric line

And ate the mustard seed

Shattered, the sculptor

Opened his eyes

There was a mustard plant

Before him

At its bed the elephants and howdahs

Were melting in an earthworm’s mouth.

Violence is common motif in these poems. Often the poems invoke the violence meted out to the community over the ages, sometime to violence in the daily lives of people, creatures. There is sadness about the pervasiveness of violence. Therefore most poems also have macabre images. The author’s preface begins thus:

On this black back

Day and night a cold hurt runs

Are all the dirt-snakes

Sleeping here?

Is my corpse rotting

Every moment?

Nataraj Huliyar who has written a preface to NKH’s Picture’s Spine says that these poems seem to have emanated from the “lonliness, struggle, sadness, bitterness, survival instinct, masochism, and the violence borne of relationships”. The book also has a blurb by Ananthamuthy who says, “these are poems to be read carefully. They have the ability to expand our cognitive ways apart from enriching our emotional world”.

I think the promise that these senior writers find in NKH is justified by the quality of his poems. He is a poet who cannot be read in a hurry.

 

Contemporary Kannada Poetry I

Manjunath S, sometime called ‘Hakkipalti Manjunath’ after the title of his first collection, is now one of the leading Kannada poets. When I first met him in 1988 or thereabout he had come out with his first collection which was quite strongly in the manner of ‘navya’. I remember a long walk I took with him in K R Nagar where he has been living. My friend Shivu KN was with us. Shivu used to do these things in his own romantic manner – meeting poets. But Shivu was very talkative. I have always been bad with words. I dont think I spoke much with Manjunath that time.

I met him in May 09, in Mysore. We spent one whole day together. I have been translating some of his poems into English. I showed him my efforts. He liked some, corrected others, tolerated some. He is a poet of intensities. Even his light verse has to be read for the intensities for us to appreciate them. Best of his poems are in awe of the world around. The perceiving self is tiny, the perceived is full of wonder. This quality of  ‘wonder-struckness’ in Manjunath’s poems is special. It is one of the major ways in which the egotistic voice is undermined.

The following is a translation of ‘Vastu Sthuti’. Suggestions welcome.

Thing Hymn

Salutes to things:May they not harden our hearts

cursing us with muteness, lethargy, dumb sleep.

Several salutes to glittering coins:

may they not jeer and lure us,

trash the truth of ruth

by vanishing from our pockets.

Special salutes to prostitutes

may their eyes of hunger and mockery

not assault poor us,

pitying let them send us on

love’s feebly fragrant trail.

Double salutes to demon and deity,

who knows who is who?

May the man with the knowledge

save his neck;

let no one enslave us

let not death

make a morsel of us while still alive.